Sneaky People: A Novel (5 page)

Leo held on to his old newspapers, iron objects, and tinfoil (he had accumulated a sphere the size of an orange) to sell himself to the Hunky junkman who came around twice a month with a horse and wagon, crying some gibberish. If Leo saw a pop bottle in gutter or empty lot he would add it to the collection of such vessels he kept in a milk crate in the trunk of his car, redeeming them for two cents each when his supply exceeded one dozen.

He was that sort of guy. On the other hand, he bought good food, always specifying ground beef and not hamburger (which could contain anything from pig’s guts to human fingers lost to the chopping machine). And he enjoyed the extravagance of paying Ralph Sandifer fifty cents to cut his lawn every Saturday, so that his own Sundays were free for slow and repeated perusals of the rotogravure section of the newspaper, which often printed pictures of young girls at swimming pools throughout the metropolitan area (“The bevy of local cuties above, l. to r.: Suejane Criswell, Ellen Reingold, Dorjean Wattle”). Sitting on the cistern cover in the shade of a half-dead elm, the smell of mown grass around him, Leo would peer at Dorjean’s little pointy breasts and write one of his imaginary letters:
Dear Miss Wattle, I couldn’t help but being passionately attracted to you on the basis of your recent photo as published in The Graphic
…This would be more stilted, less inordinate than the note to the girl, Ralph’s acquaintance, he had followed into the Greek’s, because he had seen Dorjean only in the paper.

But here he was, this careful man, driving about with several hundred dollars which as yet could not be termed stolen but in no event could be called his property.

L
AVERNE WAS PREPARING
one of Buddy’s favorite suppers: fried pork chops, fried potatoes, fried apples. Standing at the stove, she wore his favorite costume: a short frilly pink apron over black-lace step-ins and brassiere, long-gartered silk stockings, and platform shoes.

Buddy relished the sight of her from behind in this garb. Sometimes he would steal up and pinch her bottom. Otherwise he sat at the kitchen table, fully dressed in his street clothes, including necktie but not blazer. He had even brushed his teeth with the Squibb toothbrush he maintained in a celluloid case in the medicine chest.

Laverne was a robust woman, only two inches shorter than his own five-nine, and weighing a good 130: a big blonde, a real armful. She lifted the edge of the pan top with which she had covered the skillet so as not to be spattered with sizzling fat and peered underneath. She squealed and dropped it instantly: a flying grease drop had escaped and smitten her wrist.

“Dagnab it!” Even when hurt she would not curse: Buddy liked that trait.

Concerned, he half rose. “Want the Unguentine?”

She wiped her arm with a quilted potholder and raised it to her squinting eyes. Laverne was farsighted but refused to consider glasses. Because of her attire the windowshade was lowered, and the light was far from good.

“Naw, it’s nothing.”

“Next time,” said Buddy, “hold the lid like a shield; you know, like King Arthur.”

“That’s what
she
does, right?”

“Come on, honeypot, don’t be a dope. I figured that out sitting here right now. I figure out a lot of things from time to time. I ought to get a patent on them.”

“Oh, yeah?” Using his suggested trick, Laverne determined that the chops were done on one side and levered them over with a spatula. “Like what?” This was no wiseguy, doubting question: she was always interested in hearing his ideas.

“Well, the other day when you had your period, remember, you said how it embarrassed you to go inna drugstore and buy Kotexes if a man waits on you.”

“Worse if it’s some smarty-pants kid,” she said. She seemed to be developing an obsession about teen-aged boys. Buddy thought privately that if it were Ralph, the lad would be more ashamed than she, but he agreed diplomatically.

“Sure, sure. I used to feel like that if I had to buy cundrums from a woman.”

“You have to call ’em that, Buddy?”

“Sweetie, I told you that’s not a dirty word. It’s the right name. It doesn’t come from ‘cunt.’”

“You don’t see it on the package, do you? Why can’t you say ‘prophylactics,’ huh?”

Buddy sighed. “O.K. What I’m getting at is, you know Ralph, he sends away for a lot of free catalogues and samples. Last year the kid bought a dollar’s worth of penny postcards and sent all hundred out…”

Laverne frowned and turned away. She had nothing against Ralph, whom she had never seen, except that he was part of Buddy’s other life—and that Buddy had only an hour ago used him as an excuse for not telling Naomi he wanted a divorce. Buddy was insensitive to this, though he never mentioned Naomi to her if he could help it.

“And you know I get my fishskins by mail, in plain wrapper—could be a box of cigars. They sell everything that way nowadays. Convenience. In your own home, see?”

Laverne had the potatoes all sliced and ready, and the apples as well. She salted the former and dusted the latter with sugar and a sprinkling of cinnamon, the aroma of which reached Buddy and implemented the sense of well-being that had already been created in him by the lovemaking, the shower, Laverne’s costume, and the bouquet of pork chops frying in bacon grease. Ballbacher and, for that matter, even Naomi were distant unpleasantnesses.

“Now, here’s my idea: how about Kotexes by mail order? The feature is, a woman’s period comes up every month on schedule. You could have a standing order. Every thirty days, see, a box of Kotex is automatically mailed to the woman, like a magazine subscription. Plain wrapper, comes right to the house. No embarrassment of drugstores. Also, it would probably be cheaper because of the guaranteed order, like a magazine costs less by mail than on a newsstand.”

“Yeah, I subscribe to
Silver Screen
for that very reason,” said Laverne, who read more about movie luminaries than she saw pictures. One of her ambitions was to visit Hollywood and take the bus tour of the stars’ homes, as had been done by a female acquaintance who won the trip in a marathon dance contest some years earlier. More than once Laverne had mentioned to Buddy that California would be a nifty place for a honeymoon.

“See,” said Buddy, “that’s the kind of idea I ought to get a patent on. Kotex-of-the-Month Club.”

“That’s a swell idea, Bud.” In taking the pork chops from the skillet she dropped one, and it skidded across the linoleum almost to Buddy’s shoes. “Oops,” said she, “wrong number.” She retrieved it and went to the sink, where she rinsed it under the hot-water faucet. “I’ll take this one,” she said.

“Don’t be dumb,” said Buddy.

“No, the juice is all washed off.” She was a wonderful girl, always concerned for his welfare. Buddy went over and put his hands under her apron.

When Leo got home his mother said: “You missed it, Leo.” She lay on the davenport under an afghan. From the corner the parrot screeched.

Leo said: “I’ll bet.” He went to the parrot’s cage. The bird turned its scruffy green head upside down and uttered a piercing whistle. Leo had owned him for almost twenty years. God knew how old it was. Some said they lived to eighty or more. Leo had been willed it by an old lady to whom he had delivered newspapers as a lad.

The parrot greeted him with its own name: “Hi, Boy.”

“Hi, Boy,” Leo answered, and then clucked with his tongue.

Boy brought his head to its normal position and laughed cacophonously. This was an affectionate utterance: Boy was fond of Leo. Boy and Leo’s mother ignored each other. Boy detested all strangers, but had seen few if any in years.

“You missed my hemorrhage,” explained Leo’s mother. “Blood gushed from my nose and throat. I left a trail throughout the house.”

Leo did not trouble to seek the evidence. In earlier years he would have said he saw no blood, and his mother would have answered that she had cleaned it up, and he would have said the carpet was not damp, and she would have answered that it had dried quickly on such a warm day, and he would have said that it wasn’t especially warm today, and she would have responded with a smug smile.

You couldn’t get an argument out of his mother, who had the peculiarity of talking to herself when addressing him, though she never did it when alone, as he had frequently observed from places of hiding.

“Bum!” Boy cried fondly, behind his back.

With the money in his pocket and the heartburn in his midsection, Leo had little interest in food. Without hope he said: “I guess if you’re so sick you won’t want much of a supper. I was thinking I’d open a can of tomato soup—”

“And then?” asked his mother, her eyes full of gluttonous glee. She had never needed glasses and did not have a single filling. At fifty-eight she looked as if she had been a beauty at twenty; yet old photos did not support this assumption, showing her as rather plain.

“Uh-huh,” Leo said stoically, “you want me to heat the pot roast and make mashed potatoes and peas ‘n’ carrots?” His mother was nodding vigorously. “Feed a hemorrhage, starve a fever,” said he. “Well, let me go and get washed first.”

He went through the beaded curtain into the hallway and began deliberately to climb the stairs.

“Leo,” called his mother. “What’s dessert?”

He supported himself on the banister and pondered. ‘There’s some devil’s-food left and then I could open a can of apricots.”

In his room Leo took off the seersucker jacket, examined the collar, saw quite a ring of oily dirt, and hung the garment on the closet doorknob so he would remember to deal with it on the morrow. Looking down at his pants, he saw a conspicuous bulge so near his crotch that a neutral observer might have taken it for an erection: the wad of money. He withdrew it and placed it on the dresser between a cigar box that contained collar studs, a penknife, and other items owned by his late father and a faded photograph of the man in the uniform of the Spanish-American War, in which his father had claimed to serve as one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders; but once when he had one too many he confessed he had actually been some kind of rear-area supply clerk.

From time to time it had occurred to Leo that his father might have jumped, and not fallen, off the roof, where he had ostensibly gone to search for a persistent leak. This was an absurd thought, given his father’s happy-go-lucky temperament: the man was grinning in this very picture. Though if you looked very long at a frozen, photographic smile it turned into a grimace of hatred.

Leo removed his pants and put them on a hanger. He stood now in his sagging BVD’s and dark-green white-clocked lisle socks, navy-blue garters, and light-tan oxfords. Leo was mildly bowlegged—not enough to illustrate his father’s old joke: “If he stood next to a sawbuck he’d spell OX”—but otherwise he had a decent build of the sinewy type. He took good care of himself generally, drinking a pint of milk every day and always starting out with a hearty breakfast of the country-fresh eggs that were delivered once a week by a farmer. The greasy hamburger had been an aberrant snack.

He thought of counting the money again, but he was under an even worse pressure here than at the office, his mother expecting her supper momentarily so that she could be finished by the time her radio programs came on. A sense of responsibility was Leo’s principal trait of character.

After he washed the dishes he would take his Saturday night bath, go to bed, and sleep soundly unless awakened by the sound of his mother’s vomiting in the bathroom. She did this, whether really or in simulation, several nights a week, continuing to retch until she had routed him from bed.

However, Leo was not basically a bitter man. He found his mother no more alien than any other full-grown woman.

Ralph could not have cut the back yard anyway: it was full of wet wash on ropes stretched between iron standards and supported here and there with splintery wooden clothes props. No one but his mother would have done the wash on Saturday; she was unrepresentative in that as well as other areas, and also inconsistent: by accident she might even occasionally do the laundry on Monday.

He found her in the kitchen, opening a can of salmon.

“You know I said at lunch I would cut our grass?”

Naomi dumped the solid pink cylinder into a bowl and began to mash it. “And you can’t because of the wash.”

“That would sure be a good excuse, but the truth is I left the lawnmower down at the lot. I just wanted you to know why I didn’t keep my word.”

“Ralph, do you think that sometimes you are too honest?” She turned the bowl over and violently shook its contents onto a plateful of lettuce.

“Maybe,” he said soberly. “But the truth is the truth.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” said his mother. “Maybe it is all made up.” She carried the plate to the table. Supper was that and soda crackers, followed by a chocolate cupcake moist with sweat from the cellophane.

After eating, Ralph walked a few blocks to Horse Hauser’s, went to the back steps, and called: “Hey, Hauser!” This was the protocol. Not until you had completed high school did you mount the stairs and knock or ring; not unless you got a formal invitation to a party did you ever use the front.

It took two or three of such cries before Hauser appeared behind the screendoor, wiping his mouth on his hand and that on his ass. He said: “Hi, Fartface.”

“You coming out?”

“When I finish my pie.”

Ralph sat on the steps and waited. After about fifteen minutes Hauser emerged, letting the screendoor slam behind him with a loud report. He was about the same height as Ralph but considerably heavier, and most of the difference was in muscle. Ralph did not like to engage in warm-weather sports with Horse, owing to his own comparative frailness, which Hauser lost no opportunity to mention when they had their shirts off.

By way of greeting Horse gave him a painful punch in the upper arm. Ralph winced, and Hauser said jovially: “What a fruit!”

Before they had taken two strides, Hauser’s father, an enormous bald man wearing an undershirt, loomed in the doorway and shouted: “You slam that screendoor once more, you little pup, and I’ll put my shoe up your asshole.”

Hauser slunk cravenly around the corner, but once in the side yard he showed Ralph he was giving his old man the Finger.

They walked down to the business district. Ralph took care when they passed certain yards because of Hauser’s tendency to maneuver him to the inside and push him into a hedge. Hauser was childishly treacherous, but Ralph had always been attracted by his ebullience.

When they passed the city hall with its side door marked
POLICE
, Hauser said: “Why is a police station like a men’s room?” Ralph didn’t know. “That’s where the dicks hang out.” Ralph did not respond as soon as Hauser wished and got an elbow in the ribs for his delay. “You don’t get it.”

“Sure I do,” said Ralph, looking down the street because he thought he spotted the lush figure, surmounted by the dishwater-blond head, of Imogene Clevenger, a subject of his fantasies though in real-life encounters she never seemed to see him. To gain prestige with Hauser he said: “Boy, would I like to put it to that.”